North Korea - new leader but same tired game

ON NORTH KOREA

Published
4:00 am PDT, Wednesday, April 11, 2012

When 28-year old Kim Jong Un took over North Korea after his father's death, there was hope that he would take his isolated, dirt-poor country in a new direction. How ridiculous that notion looks now as his military prepares to launch a 100-foot missile and reportedly readies an underground nuclear test.

In case anyone needed a fresh lesson, North Korea feeds off promises, pledges and treaties, which it rips up to restart diplomatic bargaining. Dating back decades, the North has played this tired game just as it is now.

Within the next few days, it's due to launch a three stage missile - purely for weather observation and communications, mind you - even though it agreed just months ago not to test such rockets. In addition, South Korean experts believe their hostile neighbor is piling up dirt around a tunnel opening, a preliminary to a third deep-down nuclear test.

What happens next will likely be the usual: Washington will cancel promised food shipments, the North will unleash a tidal wave of scorching rhetoric, and the barriers that bottle up the nation will rise higher.

If things stopped there, it might be a fitting end: a mindless dictatorship left to stew in its mistakes. But with its million-soldier army, nuclear research and infant missile technology, the North can't be ignored - and it knows it.

So the frustrating game of coaxing it out of its hole and offering terms for good behavior will begin again. The North - bombastic, unreasonable and dangerous - still has cards to play even though it's repeatedly been caught cheating.

The Obama team has proved neither better nor worse than past administrations at getting the North to negotiate seriously. But given North Korea's lethal potential for harm, the White House will be duty bound to try again. An accidental war, the shipment of nuclear technology to other countries and a concern for the plight of millions of impoverished North Koreans are among the reasons.

This is, plainly, a recipe for frustration and delay. It will take a major change to budge the North from its predictable formula of raising and then dashing hopes. Tough-minded engagement and diplomacy with no illusions lie ahead.